Peter, the oldest of their
children, was intended for a military career, but, as he himself tells
us, he abandoned Mars for Minerva, the profession of arms for that of
learning. Accordingly, at an early age, he left his father's castle and
sought instruction as a wandering scholar at the schools of the most
renowned teachers of those days. Among these teachers was Roscelin the
Nominalist, at whose school at Locmenach, near Vannes, Abelard
certainly spent some time before he proceeded to Paris.

Although the
University of Paris did not exist as a corporate institution until more
than half a century after Abelard's death, there flourished at Paris in
his time the Cathedral School, the School of Ste. Geneviève, and
that of St. Germain des Pré, the forerunners of the university
schools of the following century. The Cathedral School was undoubtedly
the most important of these, and thither the young Abelard directed his
steps in order to study dialectic under the renowned master
(scholasticus) William of Champeaux. Soon, however, the youth
from the province, for whom the prestige of a great name was far from
awe-inspiring, not only ventured to object to the teaching of the
Parisian master, but attempted to set up as a rival teacher. Finding
that this was not an easy matter in Paris, he established his school
first at Melun and later at Corbeil. This was, probably, in the year
1101.

The next couple of years Abelard spent in his native place
"almost cut off from France", as he says. The reason of this enforced
retreat from the dialectical fray was failing health. On returning to
Paris, he became once more a pupil of William of Champeaux for the
purpose of studying rhetoric. When William retired to the monastery of
St. Victor, Abelard, who meantime had resumed his teaching at Melun,
hastened to Paris to secure the chair of the Cathedral School. Having
failed in this, he set up his school in Mt. Ste. Genevieve (1108).
There and at the Cathedral School, in which in 1113 he finally
succeeded in obtaining a chair, he enjoyed the greatest renown as a
teacher of rhetoric and dialectic. Before taking up the duty of
teaching theology at the Cathedral School, he went to Laon where he
presented himself to the venerableAnselm of Laon as a student of
theology. Soon, however, his petulant restiveness under restraint once
more asserted itself, and he was not content until he had as completely
discomfited the teacher of theology at Laon as he had successfully
harassed the teacher of rhetoric and dialectic at Paris.

Taking
Abelard's own account of the incident, it is impossible not to blame
him for the temerity which made him such enemies as Alberic and
Lotulph, pupils of Anselm, who, later on, appeared against Abelard. The
"theological studies" pursued by Abelard at Laon were what we would
nowadays call the study of exegesis.

There can be no doubt that Abelard's career as a teacher at Paris, from
1108 to 1118, was an exceptionally brilliant one. In his "Story of My
Calamities" (Historia Calamitatum) he tells us how pupils
flocked to him from every country in Europe, a statement which is more
than corroborated by the authority of his contemporaries. He was, In
fact, the idol of Paris; eloquent, vivacious, handsome, possessed of an
unusually rich voice, full of confidence in his own power to please, he
had, as he tells us, the whole world at his feet. That Abelard was
unduly conscious of these advantages is admitted by his most ardent
admirers; indeed, in the "Story of My Calamities," he confesses that at
that period of his life he was filled with vanity and pride. To these
faults he attributes his downfall, which was as swift and tragic as was
everything, seemingly, in his meteoric career. He tells us in graphic
language the tale which has become part of the classic literature of
the love-theme, how he fell in love with Heloise, niece of Canon
Fulbert; he spares us none of the details of the story, recounts all
the circumstances of its tragic ending, the brutal vengeance of the
Canon, the flight of Heloise to Pallet, where their son, whom he named
Astrolabius, was born, the secret wedding, the retirement of Heloise to
the nunnery of Argenteuil, and his abandonment of his academic career.

He was at the time a cleric in minor orders, and had naturally looked
forward to a distinguished career as an ecclesiastical teacher. After
his downfall, he retired to the Abbey of St. Denis, and, Heloise having
taken the veil at Argenteuil, he assumed the habit of a Benedictinemonk at the royal Abbey of St. Denis. He who had considered himself
"the only surviving philosopher in the whole world" was willing to hide
himself -- definitely, as he thought -- in monastic solitude. But
whatever dreams he may have had of final peace in his monastic retreat
were soon shattered. He quarrelled with the monks of St. Denis, the
occasion being his irreverent criticism of the legend of their patron
saint, and was sent to a branch institution, a priory or cella,
where, once more, he soon attracted unfavourable attention by the
spirit of the teaching which he gave in philosophy and theology. "More
subtle and more learned than ever", as a contemporary (Otto of Freising) describes him, he took up the former quarrel with Anselm'spupils. Through their influence, his orthodoxy, especially on the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity, was impeached, and he was summoned to
appear before a council at Soissons, in 1121, presided over by the
papal legate, Kuno, Bishop of Praneste. While it is not easy to
determine exactly what took place at the Council, it is clear that
there was no formal condemnation of Abelard's doctrines, but that he
was nevertheless condemned to recite the Athanasian Creed, and to burn
his book on the Trinity. Besides, he was sentenced to imprisonment in
the Abbey of St. Médard, at the instance apparently, of the
monks of St. Denis, whose enmity, especially that of their AbbotAdam,
was unrelenting. In his despair, he fled to a desert place in the
neighbourhood of Troyes. Thither pupils soon began to flock, huts and
tents for their reception were built, and an oratory erected, under the
title "The Paraclete", and there his former success as a teacher was
renewed.

After the death of Adam, Abbot of St. Denis, his successor, Suger,
absolved Abelard from censure, and thus restored him to his rank as a
monk. The Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys, near Vannes, on the coast of
Brittany, having lost its Abbot in 1125, elected Abelard to fill his
place. At the same time, the community of Argenteuil was dispersed, and
Heloise gladly accepted the Oratory of the Paraclete, where she became
Abbess. As Abbot of St. Gildas, Abelard had, according to his own
account, a very troublesome time. The monks, considering him too
strict, endeavoured in various ways to rid themselves of his rule, and
even attempted to poison him. They finally drove him from the
monastery. Retaining the title of Abbot, he resided for some time in
the neighbourhood of Nantes and later (probably in 1136) resumed his
career as teacher at Paris and revived, to some extent, the renown of
the days when, twenty years earlier, he gathered "all Europe" to hear
his lectures. Among his pupils at this time were Arnold of Brescia and
John of Salisbury.

Now begins the last act in the tragedy of Abelard's
life, in which St. Bernard plays a conspicuous part. The monk of
Clairvaux, the most powerful man in the Church in those days, was
alarmed at the heterodoxy of Abelard's teaching, and questioned the
Trinitarian doctrine contained in Abelard's writings. There were
admonitions on the one side and defiances on the other; St. Bernard,
having first warned Abelard in private, proceeded to denounce him to
the bishops of France; Abelard, underestimating the ability and
influence of his adversary, requested a meeting, or council, of
bishops, before whom Bernard and he should discuss the points in
dispute. Accordingly, a council was held at Sens (the metropolitan see
to which Paris was then suffragan) in 1141. On the eve of the council a
meeting of bishops was held, at which Bernard was present, but not
Abelard, and in that meeting a number of propositions were selected
from Abelard's writings, and condemned. When, on the following morning,
these propositions were read in solemn council, Abelard, informed, so
it seems, of the proceedings of the evening before, refused to defend
himself, declaring that he appealed to Rome. Accordingly, the
propositions were condemned, but Abelard was allowed his freedom. St.
Bernard now wrote to the members of the RomanCuria, with the result
that Abelard had proceeded only as far as Cluny on his way to Rome when
the decree of Innocent II confirming the sentence of the Council of
Sens reached him. The Venerable Peter of Cluny now took up his case,
obtained from Rome a mitigation of the sentence reconciled him with St.
Bernard, and gave him honourable and friendly hospitality at Cluny.
There Abelard spent the last years of his life, and there at last he
found the peace which he had elsewhere sought in vain. He donned the
habit of the monks of Cluny and became a teacher in the school of the
monastery. He died at Chalôn-sur-Saône in 1142, and was
buried at the Paraclete. In 1817 his remains and those of Heloise were
transferred to the cemetery of Père la Chaise, in Paris, where
they now rest.

For our knowledge of the life of Abelard we rely chiefly
on the "Story of My Calamities", an autobiography written as a letter
to a friend, and evidently intended for publication. To this may be
added the letters of Abelard and Heloise, which were also intended for
circulation among Abelard's friends. The "Story" was written about the
year 1130, and the letters during the following five or six years. In
both the personal element must of course, be taken into account.
Besides these we have very scanty material; a letter from Roscelin to
Abelard, a letter of Fulco of Deuil, the chronicle of Otto of Freising,
the letters of St. Bernard, and a few allusions in the writings of John
of Salisbury. Abelard's philosophical works are "Dialectica," a
logical treatise consisting of four books (of which the first is
missing); "Liber Divisionum et Definitionum" (edited by Cousin as a
fifth book of the "Dialectica"); Glosses on Porphyry, Boëius, and
the Aristotelian "Categories"; "Glossulae in Porphyrium" (hitherto
unpublished except in a French paraphrase by Rémusat); the
fragment "De Generibus et Speciebus", ascribed to Abelard by Cousin; a
moral treatise "Scito Teipsum, seu Ethica", first published by Pez in
"Thes. Anecd. Noviss". All of these, with the exception of the
"Glossulae" and the "Ethica", are to be found in Cousin's "Ouvrages
inédits d'Abélard" (Paris, 1836). Abelard's theological
works (published by Cousin, "Petri Abselardi Opera", in 2 vols., Paris,
1849-59, also by Migne, "Patr. Lat.", CLXXVIII) include "Sic et Non",
consisting of scriptural and patristic passages arranged for and
against various theological opinions, without any attempt to
decide whether the affirmative or the negative opinion is correct or
orthodox; "Tractatus de Unitate et Trinitate Divinâ", which was
condemned at the Council of Sens (discovered and edited by
Stölzle, Freiburg, 1891); "Theologia Christiana," a second and
enlarged edition of the "Tractatus" (first published by Durand and
Martène "Thes. Nov.," 1717); "Introductio in Theologiam' (more
correctly, "Theologia"), of which the first part was published by
Duchesne in 1616; "Dialogus inter Philosophum, Judaeum, et
Christianum"; "Sententiae Petri Abaelardi", otherwise called "Epitomi
Theologiae Christianae", which is seemingly a compilation by Abelard's
pupils (first published by Rheinwald, Berlin, 1535); and several
exegetical works hymns, sequences, etc.

In philosophy Abelard deserves
consideration primarily as a dialectician. For him, as for all the
scholasticphilosophers before the thirteenth century, philosophical
inquiry meant almost exclusively the discussion and elucidation of the
problems suggested by the logical treatises of Aristotle and the
commentaries thereon, chiefly the commentaries of Porphyry and
Boëtius. Perhaps his most important contribution to philosophy and
theology is the method which he developed in his "Sic et Non" (Yea and
Nay), a method germinally contained in the teaching of his
predecessors, and afterwards brought to more definite form by Alexander
of Hales and St. ThomasAquinas. It consisted in placing before the
student the reasons pro and contra, on the principle that
truth is to be attained only by a dialectical discussion of apparently
contradictory arguments and authorities. In the problem of Universals,
which occupied so much of the attention of dialecticians in those days,
Abelard took a position of uncompromising hostility to the crude
nominalism of Roscelin on the one side, and to the exaggerated realism
of William of Champeaux on the other. What, precisely, was his own
doctrine on the question is a matter which cannot with accuracy be
determined. However, from the statements of his pupil, John of
Salisbury, it is clear that Abelard's doctrine, while expressed in
terms of a modified Nominalism, was very similar to the moderate
Realism which began to be official in the schools about half a century
after Abelard's death. In ethics Abelard laid such great stress on the
morality of the intention as apparently to do away with the objective
distinction between good and evil acts. It is not the physical action
itself, he said, nor any imaginary injury to
God, that
constitutes sin, but rather the psychological element in the action,
the intention of sinning, which is formal contempt of God. With regard
to the relation between reason and revelation, between the sciences --
including philosophy -- and theology, Abelard incurred in his own day
the censure of mystic theologians like St. Bernard, whose tendency was
to disinherit reason in favour of contemplation and ecstatic vision.
And it is true that if the principles "Reason aids Faith" and "Faith
aids Reason" are to be taken as the inspiration of scholastictheology,
Abelard was constitutionally inclined to emphasize the former, and not
lay stress on the latter. Besides, he adopted a tone, and employed a
phraseology, when speaking of sacred subjects, which gave offence, and
rightly, to the more conservative of his contemporaries. Still, Abelard
had good precedent for his use of dialectic in the elucidation of the
mysteries of faith; he was by no means an innovator in this respect;
and though the thirteenth century, the golden age of scholasticism,
knew little of Abelard, it took up his method, and with fearlessness
equal to his, though without any of his flippancy or irreverence, gave
full scope to reason in the effort to expound and defend the mysteries
of the ChristianFaith.

St. Bernard sums up the charges against Abelard
when he writes (Ep. cxcii) "Cum de Trinitate loquitur, sapit Arium; cum
do gratiâ, sapit Pelagium; cum de personâ Christi, sapit
Nestorium", and there is no doubt that on these several heads Abelard
wrote and said many things which were open to objection from the point
of view of orthodoxy. That is to say, while combating the opposite
errors, he fell inadvertently into mistakes which he himself did not
recognize as Arianism, Pelagianism, and Nestonanism, and which even his
enemies could characterize merely as savouring of Arianism,
Pelagianism, and Nestorianism. Abelard's influence on his immediate
successors was not very great, owing partly to his conflict with the
ecclesiastical authorities, and partly to his personal defects, more
especially his vanity and pride, which must have given the impression
that he valued truth less than victory.

His influence on the philosophers and theologians of the thirteenth
century was, however, very great. It was exercised chiefly through
Peter Lombard, his pupil, and other framers of the "Sentences." Indeed,
while one must be careful to discount the exaggerated encomiums of
Compayré, Cousin, and others, who represent Abelard as the first
modern, the founder of the University of Paris, etc., one is justified
in regarding him, in spite of his faults of character and mistakes of
judgment, as an important contributor to scholastic method, an
enlightened opponent of obscurantism, and a continuator of that revival
of learning which occurred in the Carolingian age, and of which
whatever there is of science, literature, and speculation in the early
Middle Ages is the historical development.

Abelard wrote Sic et Non at first in answer to the Islamic accusation that Christianity is contradictory, because the writings of different church leaders all differed and therefore contradicted each other.

Abelard identified the contradictions and identified how to resolve the contradictions. He also tried to reconcile differences between two different sources by showing the use of figurative language might assume different facts. He was then able to establish the intergrity of church traditions.